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Saturday, May 12, 2012

The Obama administration has doubled down on the use of drones to
go after bad guys. How long until the blowback comes?

BY JAMES TRAUB

Last
month, according to news accounts, U.S. President Barack Obama agreed to widen
the scope of drone attacks carried out against al Qaeda members in Yemen.
Previously, strikes targeted only known individuals; henceforth, the CIA and
the U.S. military's Joint Special Operations Command will be permitted to
target people whose patterns of behavior make them high-value targets. Many
counterterrorism and Yemen experts think that the White House is opening up the
gates of hell. They might be right, but I wish the alternatives they suggest
were more convincing.

The
White House's decision is important not only in itself but as an indication of
how Obama wishes to fight the war on terror. The president inherited the wars
in Iraq and Afghanistan; whatever he did there was largely reactive. Americans
are no longer fighting in Iraq, however, and they have begun to draw down in
Afghanistan. The locus of terrorism has also moved on, to Yemen, Somalia, and
the Maghreb. These are the sites where Obama is free to choose his tactics --
and make his mark. His strategy is complex; in places like Yemen and Nigeria,
the Obama administration is trying to improve the ability of embattled
governments to deliver services and is training militaries to stand up to
terrorists. But drone warfare has moved to the very center of the White House's
strategy. Just as George W. Bush may be recalled as the president who tried to
fight terrorism by waging war and removing tyrants, Obama may be recalled as
the president who sought to rout terrorists through targeted killing from the
sky.

Obama
has authorized not only a new policy but a new global infrastructure for drone
warfare. Last year the Washington Post reported that the United States is
"assembling a constellation of secret drone bases" in Ethiopia, the
Seychelles, Djibouti, and the Arabian Peninsula. After years of refusing to
acknowledge the secret effort, the White House has decided to openly make the
argument for drones. On April 30, White House counterterrorism advisor John
Brennan delivered a speech in which he argued that targeted strikes from remote
aircraft satisfy the criteria of just war and constitute a "wise"
choice because they allow for immediate response, eliminate American
casualties, and minimize -- virtually to zero, according to Brennan though not
to a multitude of skeptics -- collateral damage to civilians. Brennan went into
unusual detail in explaining the painstaking standards applied to each
targeting decision.

If
drones are the future of counterterrorism, Yemen is the laboratory. The country
looks like a much more propitious setting for the effort than Pakistan, where
Obama has also stepped up the pace of attacks. The Pakistani security
establishment treats the Taliban not as a threat but as a strategic asset,
while the current, admittedly extremely tenuous government of Yemen views al
Qaeda as a threat to its sovereignty. Over the last year, as the regime of
President Ali Abdullah Saleh disintegrated in the face of massive public
demonstrations, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), as the local
affiliate is known, occupied a swath of territory in southern Yemen. The new
interim government of President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi has welcomed the U.S.
effort and used its own air force to supplement American drones. And while in
Pakistan al Qaeda and Taliban forces mingle with the local population, AQAP, by
staking out its own territory, has exposed itself to aerial attack. In the last
few weeks, drone strikes have killed Mohammed Saeed al-Umda, fourth on Yemen's
most-wanted list, and Fahd Mohammed Ahmed al-Quso, AQAP's external operations
director.

As
military solutions go, drones really are hard to beat. As Brennan noted,
"Countries typically don't want foreign soldiers in their cities and
towns." By contrast, "there is the precision of targeted
strikes." The drone thus represents a lesson learned from the first
generation of the war on terror: Precision limits popular backlash. But is that
really true? By all accounts, drone strikes in Pakistan have become ever more
accurate, but still inflame Pakistani public opinion almost as much as has the
occasional incursion by U.S. or NATO forces. In March, Pakistan's parliament
voted to prohibit such strikes altogether. That outrage, in turn, has made it
almost impossible for the United States to achieve its long-term goals of
helping Pakistan become a stable, civilian-run state. Short-term success has
jeopardized the long-term goal -- though that price might still be worth
paying.

That
hasn't happened yet in Yemen. And perhaps it won't, so long as the drones hit
al Qaeda terrorists rather than local insurgents, not to mention civilians. But
that's a leap of faith. As Barbara Bodine, a former ambassador to Yemen, notes,
"Right now we don't have a Pakistan-like reaction. But at first we didn't
have that reaction with Pakistan either. This is something that builds. And
folks in Yemen know what's going on in Pakistan. This will play into the
broader narrative of the drones we use in Pakistan and Afghanistan."
Another lesson learned from Afghanistan is that even a counterinsurgency effort
designed to protect civilians and promote good government will provoke
nationalist resistance. People on the ground will see the intervention as
against them, not for them (which explains why, according to WikiLeaks cables,
President Saleh publicly insisted that the Yemeni air force had launched the
strikes). Counterinsurgency, which seemed so promising all of two or three
years ago, now looks like an illusory, or at least oversold, solution to the
war on terror. How long before we say the same of drones?

The
answer, in both cases, is not to abandon the approach but to acknowledge its
inevitable costs. There are no cost-free military solutions. The drone strikes
that killed Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan, two AQAP leaders, were well worth
the effort; the same should be said of more recent attacks. But when does the
cost exceed the value? Bodine said that she recently attended a conference at
"an undisclosed location" in which this very question provoked
furious debate among security officials. The White House, in fact, pushed back
against a CIA request to set the same targeting rules in Yemen that it now
operates under in Pakistan, where it is permitted to strike militants who pose
a threat to U.S. forces whether or not they include a high-value target. So
there is skepticism in high places, if not in the CIA or special operations
forces. The new "pattern" rules may still be too broad.

The
frequency of strikes is already much greater than most of us realize. A report
by the Britain-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism counts 21 definite or
possible drone strikes in Yemen over the last two months; a Yemeni government
official has said that the United States has been launching an average of two
strikes a day since mid-April. The danger of producing more militants than we kill
in Yemen hardly seems hypothetical.

The
danger, more broadly, is that the United States will fall in love with drones
and thus that targeted strikes become the U.S. strategy rather than an element
of it. Of course, that raises the question of what that larger strategy should
be -- not only in Yemen but in the other places where al Qaeda seeks to exploit
weak states to gain a territorial foothold. The answer, from most critics, is
that the United States must not sacrifice the long term for the short term.
Gregory Johnsen, a Yemen expert who blogs at the site Waq al-Waq, argues that
the United States must accept "the really difficult work of diplomacy and
counter-terrorism." The no-shortcut answer is capacity-building, democracy
promotion, economic development. The only long-term solution to the al Qaeda
exploitation of state failure is to cure state failure.

That's
true, of course. But that may not be a fair criticism of the Obama
administration, which has been pursuing just such a strategy since 2009, though
it was derailed by the political turmoil and violence of the last year. Only in
recent months have many military and civilian programs in Yemen been restored.
Beyond that, however, what grounds do we have for putting any faith in such a
strategy? Experience in Afghanistan, which in some ways Yemen strongly
resembles, has not been encouraging. The appeal of precision airstrikes is
magnified by the failure of the less lethal alternatives.

I'll
devote next week's column to the question of what, if anything, the United
States and other partners can do, and should do, to help the Yemenis help
themselves -- and thus to put the drones in their proper place.

-This commentary was published first in Foreign Policy on 11/05/2012
-James Traub is a fellow of the Center on International Cooperation

Algeria’s
instability claimed another self-immolation victim, Rechak Hamza, on April 29.
Hamza set himself on fire in Jijel, in eastern Algeria, suffering third-degree
burns. He was airlifted to a hospital in Constantine before succumbing to his
injuries. His funeral was held on May 2.

Hamza
was a 25-year old cigarette vendor working in the densely populated Moussa
Village district of Jijel. He committed his desperate act following an
altercation with local police, who forced him to dismantle his stand and only
means of livelihood. For local residents, it was yet another instance of hogra
— an Algerian term for the “contempt” of the ruled by the rulers. Hogra
arrogantly condones the violence of a selected few against the many.

Violent
protests broke out in Jijel once the news broke of Hamza’s death in
Constantine. Police attempted to barricade Moussa Village to contain angry crowds
of 1,000 or more people as youths marched on the provincial capital. Tensions
in Jijel remain high, and a police inquiry into the incident is underway.

Algeria
has seen hundreds of such self-immolations this year, including at least 60 in
the coastal city of Doran alone. Yet unlike in neighboring Tunisia, these
sparks have yet to set Algeria aflame. Many Algerians feel that the country
already had its “Arab Spring” when Islamists won the first round of the
national elections in 1991, leading to a fierce state crackdown and a civil
war.

It’s
not likely that the parliamentary elections on May 10 will resolve the deep
divisions in Algerian society. Even before the announcement of the official
results, the Islamist coalition began accusing the authories of election fraud.
The Islamists are shown to be coming in a distant third, behind two
pro-government parties. El Watan and other independent newspapers, citing
country-wide disaffection, have expressed skepticism over the governmen’t final
voter turn-out count.The final report
from international election monitors is not expected before July. Algerians may
not wait that long before resuming their protests.

Bread before Ballots

The
National Liberation Front (FLN) has ruled Algeria since 1962, surviving the massive
riots in 1988, a decade-long civil war in the 1990s, and more recently the wave
of revolutions in the region. Following an outbreak of protests in Algeria’s
major cities last year, the government instituted a handful of unimpressive
reforms, including a call for parliamentary elections on May 10.

Algerians
may have other things on their minds. The prices of consumer goods have
steadily increased since late February, leading many to accuse the government
of manipulating food prices ahead of the general elections. The use of food
prices for political leverage is not new in Algeria; analysts seem to be of two
minds about their precise utility. The first camp believes that the government
covertly drives food prices up by controlling the amount of produce available
in the market, then exploiting the rising prices as an electoral issue. Another
school of thought is that rising food prices create a distraction for citizens,
leading them to abstain from the political process (and the opposition) by
forcing them to worry about “le pain quotidien” (daily bread) instead of
politics.

The
opaqueness, corruption, and straightforward hogra of those in power make it
difficult to fully unravel the level of political manipulation in food prices.
But the basic fact remains that Algerian citizens end up footing the bill when
the economy is used in the political struggle to maintain power.

Real Hogra

Abdelaziz
Belkhadem, the secretary general of the FLN and personal representative of
President Bouteflika since 2008, perfectly exemplifies the hogra in Algeria.
Belkhadem is part of a rotating cast of elites in President Bouteflika’s
cabinet who reshuffle themselves among ministries and roles to give the
illusion of change. Belkhadem said in a conference on May 1 in the city of
Boumerdes that the “multiparty and democratic system has not responded to the
aspirations of the Algerian people,” citing the failure of political parties
created since the “opening” of the political field in the late 1980s to create
any alternative programs or offer social solutions. He continued by accusing
certain parties in the opposition of promoting a false platform and unattainable
reforms.

Algeria’s
current political system, which is entirely dominated by the FLN, allows almost
no room for any type of genuine democratic practice. Belkhadem’s comment, a
disingenuous broadside from one of the country’s privileged elites, exemplifies
how far the leadership has strayed from the masses.

Belkhadem’s
suggestion that the FLN — the self-described “party of the mujahideen” — is the
only party that cares about the interests of the nation is insulting to those
who have witnessed the ongoing suppression of genuine popular appeals. Despite
the “opening” of the political field and the broader regional upheavals,
censorship on information in Algeria continues, so most of the population is
forced to get domestic news from foreign new sources. ENTV (the state’s
official television channel) all but blacklisted the opposition parties in the
run-up to the elections. Silencing the opposition in every conceivable way
supports the parody of the democratic system in Algeria.

Parliamentary Elections

Forty-four
political parties, nearly half of which are brand new, and numerous independent
candidates are vying to win the newly enlarged parliament’s 462 seats. Yet as
Hadda Hazzam, a columnist for Algerian daily El-Fadjr, wrote, “The majority of
the participating parties have neither platforms nor charismatic figures
capable of promoting change or of creating a powerful opposition against the
authorities.” Average citizens in Algeria are both overwhelmed with the number
of unknown candidates and skeptical of the entire “democratic” process. The
profusion of parties without tangible future plans, as well as a disconnect
between the general populace and the leaders of the parties, all work in favor
of ensuring the existing state of affairs and all of its associated fraud.

One
of the differences between this election and previous elections is the
delegation of some 200 international monitors. The delegation will remain in
Algeria until June to observe the entire electoral procedure and produce a
report expected in July. But even before election day they ran into problems as
the authorities denied the EU mission’s access to the national voters registry.
Patriots on Fire, one of the rare blogs on Algeria in English, opined,
“Algerian rulers have missed another opportunity and are playing with fire.”

Still,
the public’s present lack of interest and cynical attitude toward the
politicians’ empty promises and rhetoric do not detract from the power they
have to dismantle the status quo. Belkhadem did not neglect to urge young
people “not [to] hear those who incite rebellion.” He continued, “I know there
are gaps. But we must protect our country because it is inappropriate to go
back to square one.”

A Missing Link

Algeria’s
50th year of independence is this July. It has been 50 years of manipulation
and exploitation by the government. Algeria’s rulers may have evaded the first
wave of regional revolution, but it would be a fatal mistake for them to think
they are now in the clear. Only genuine democratic reform and a rollback of the
hogra-based system can deter more extreme approaches to change in the future.
Cosmetic changes to the political system will only strengthen the hand of
anti-democratic radicals.

Algerians
still do not identify with their leaders. According to El Watan, Algeria’s
youth, who make up roughly three-quarters of the country’s 37 million
inhabitants, planned on abstaining en masse in protest of the vote’s
credibility. In order for the country to progress any further, there is a dire
need to start by finally connecting the leaders and the masses. Despite the
hype of reform,the latest election will
not accomplish that goal.

-This commentary was published first in Foreign Policy In Focus on
11/05/2012
-Wided Khadraoui graduated from the London School of Economics with an MSc in
conflict studies. She is a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus

Friday, May 11, 2012

Israel's new coalition government will strengthen Benjamin
Netanyahu's hand on Iran. But it will also force him to address long-standing
internal issues, suggesting that Israelis, even as they trust Netanyahu on
foreign policy, are no longer willing to defer domestic change.

In
forming a vast new coalition government earlier this week -- which now includes
the centrist party, Kadima, in addition to right-wing factions -- Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has one overriding purpose: to strengthen his hand
on Iran. He now has uncontested political legitimacy with which to pressure the
United States against protracted negotiations with Iran and to continue
threatening a preemptive attack of his own.

Yet
although Netanyahu cares most about stopping the Iranian nuclear program, the
immediate impetus for the unity government was domestic: a call for electoral
reform and ending the exemption of ultra-Orthodox seminary students from
serving in the military. Even as Netanyahu forms the expanded coalition to advance
his position on Iran, he cannot ignore these internal issues -- a sign that the
Israeli electorate increasingly demands that its leaders address foreign and
domestic concerns simultaneously.

The
unity deal is Netanyahu’s attempt to reiterate to the United States his resolve
to stop Iran from acquiring atomic weapons. In March, when U.S. President
Barack Obama attempted to reassure Israel that he would not allow Iran to
become a nuclear power by declaring that “the United States will always have
Israel’s back,” Jerusalem essentially responded, “No thanks.” Israelis will not
entrust their security to any outsider, even a friend. They recall that weeks
before the 1967 Six-Day War, U.S. President Lyndon Johnson, as good a friend as
Israel has had in the White House, refused an Israeli request to lead an
international flotilla to open the Straits of Tiran, which Egypt had shut to
Israeli shipping -- even though Washington had promised to do precisely that in
return for an Israeli withdrawal from Sinai following the 1956 Suez War. After
Johnson’s refusal, Israel launched a successful preemptive strike against
Egypt.

The
creation of a unity government confirms that preemption remains an option for
Israel toward threats perceived as existential. And that policy has broad
potential support. What’s more, the much-publicized attacks on Netanyahu’s Iran
policy have to some extent been misunderstood abroad. Not even Netanyahu’s most
bitter critics -- such as Meir Dagan, the former head of the Mossad, Israel’s
intelligence agency, and, more recently, Yuval Diskin, the former head of the
Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service -- have suggested that Israel
could live with a nuclear Iran. The debate, instead, has been over timing. That
is especially the case with Kadima head Shaul Mofaz, who said in March that an
attack on Iran would be “disastrous.” Some have claimed that he may use his
position in the cabinet to oppose a strike. Yet Mofaz merely condemned a
“premature” operation, and stated that he would back Netanyahu if it became
apparent that only an Israeli attack could stop Iran’s nuclear program. In
fact, in 2008, Mofaz said that "if Iran continues with its program for
developing nuclear weapons, we will attack it… [it] will be unavoidable."

In
creating a resilient government, Netanyahu has, in effect, put Obama’s
diplomatic initiative with Iran on probation. If negotiations fail to produce
tangible results soon, or if, as Israeli policymakers fear, Obama is prepared
to allow Iran to reach breakout capacity without actually producing a bomb,
Israel is better positioned to strike alone.

The
coalition has also strengthened Netanyahu’s policy toward the Palestinians.
Although Netanyahu suggested that the new government would make advancing the
peace process one of its top objectives, negotiations will likely remain
stalled. Even if Netanyahu were to impose another settlement freeze, as he did
in 2009, no Israeli government, let alone this one, would stop building in
Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem -- a Palestinian precondition for
resuming peace talks. And little public pressure exists to resume the process.
Even many Israelis who oppose Netanyahu agree that blame for the lack of
progress hardly belongs to Israel alone. Most Israelis -- around 70 percent, according
to repeated polls conducted by the Truman Institute for the Advancement of
Peace -- support a two-state solution. But that same majority, those polls
reveal, doubts the possibility of an agreement in the near future and questions
whether any territorial concessions will win Israel real peace and legitimacy.
That is one reason that, in six weeks of anti-government social protests last
summer led by young liberal activists, the peace process went unmentioned. And
now, given the uncertainty of relations with Egypt, with whom Israel shares its
only successful land-for-peace agreement, Israelis are hardly prepared to risk
another territorial withdrawal, especially from territories that border Tel
Aviv and Jerusalem.

Much
of the international community has profoundly misread the attitude of the
Israeli public toward the occupation and peace. Contrary to what many foreign
commentators have suggested, the Israeli mainstream has not accepted the status
quo with smug indifference. Instead, most Israelis keenly understand the
long-term dangers posed by the occupation to Israel’s international standing
and to its ability to remain both a Jewish and a democratic state. All major
Israeli parties now accept a two-state solution. Twenty years ago, the Labor
Party opposed a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza; today, even
Yisrael Beiteinu, the party of right-wing Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman,
accepts the principle of Palestinian statehood. In endorsing the idea of two
states for two peoples, Netanyahu negated a core ideological principle of the
Likud, and has helped transform the debate over the territories from an
ideological to a pragmatic issue: Under what conditions can Israel withdraw in
relative safety? For many supporters, Netanyahu offers the best reassurance of
protecting vital Israeli security interests in any future withdrawal.

Netanyahu
now has over three-quarters of the Knesset in his government. When the prime
minister founded his government three years ago, he hoped to create a unity
coalition. But he failed in efforts to include Kadima, and although he did
bring in Labor, it eventually quit. (A small breakaway faction, led by Defense
Minister Ehud Barak, remained.) Still, he did exclude the Knesset’s most
right-wing party, the National Union, which supports the most militant
settlers. And with this new coalition, Netanyahu can credibly claim to
represent the broad Israeli center.

Although
the new unity government will allow Netanyahu to focus on Iran, it will also
force him to address critical domestic issues. For the first time, the
political system is positioned to deal with long-standing structural and
ideological distortions that threaten the cohesion of Israeli society. Foremost
among those is the wholesale exemption of thousands of ultra-Orthodox seminary
students from the military draft -- a separatism that is, thanks to coalition
politics, subsidized by the Israeli mainstream. Along with ending the mass
exemptions, this coalition will need to reform the electoral system to prevent
the ultra-Orthodox minority from continuing to dictate terms to every
coalition.

The
new government will aim to implement a system of universal conscription that
will allow the ultra-Orthodox to perform alternative national service instead
of joining the military. This has significant implications for another
community outside the mainstream -- Israel’s 1.2 million Arab Israelis. Aside
from the Druze, a minority Islamic sect, Arab Israelis are exempt from the
draft. Yet some form of national service is essential in strengthening the Arab
case for equality in a society whose Jewish men devote three years to the
nation’s defense and then continue in reserve duty into their forties.

Initial
polls suggest that the Israeli public largely doubts that the new coalition
will change the electoral system or enact universal conscription. Given the
cynical nature of Israeli politics, the skepticism is understandable. But this
time it may be wrong. Mofaz knows that his political future depends on showing
results. And Netanyahu understands that if he fails to exploit the historic
opportunity for change that he has created, he will face the public’s harsh
judgment.

Still,
with the issue of Iran pressing, time is not on the government’s side. Domestic
change must begin quickly. And given that Netanyahu prefers to negotiate with
ultra-Orthodox leaders and establish a gradual transition to conscription, that
process has to start before potential security emergencies intervene and
sideline internal affairs.

Whether
or not Netanyahu can solve these problems, the fact that he cannot ignore them,
even at this fateful moment with Iran, indicates a profound transformation of
Israeli politics. Israelis are no longer willing to defer domestic change.
Ironically, the more daunting Israel’s external threats, the more the public
has turned inward. That is an expression of Israeli pragmatism: since the
average Israeli believes that he personally cannot affect developments in the
region, then better focus on problems closer at hand.

Zionism
once promised that Israel would become an equal, accepted member of the community
of nations. Besieged and embattled, it is hardly that. But Zionism did fulfill
one pledge: to teach Jews how to defend themselves. For now, at least,
self-defense from existential threat defines Israeli politics. Yet as even this
coalition of national emergency proves, Israel’s leaders can no longer ignore
the longing of their people for a politics of normalcy.

-This commentary was first published in Foreign Affairs on
11/05/2012
-Yossi Klein Halevi is a fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem
and a contributing editor to the New Republic

Considering
Egypt's presidential elections take place later this month, last weekend's
Islamist clash with the military could not have come at a worse time.

First,
the story: due to overall impatience—and rage that the Salafi presidential
candidate, Abu Ismail, was disqualified (several secular candidates were also
disqualified)—emboldened Islamists began to gather around the Defense Ministry
in Abbassia, Cairo, late last week, chanting jihadi slogans, and preparing for
a "million man" protest for Friday, May 4th.

As
Egypt's Al Ahram put it, "Major Egyptian Islamist parties and
groups—including the Muslim Brotherhood, the Salafist Calling and Al-Gamaa
Al-Islamiya—have issued calls for a Tahrir Square demonstration on Friday under
the banner of 'Saving the revolution.' … Several non-Islamist revolutionary
groups, meanwhile, have expressed their refusal to participate in the
event." In other words, last Friday was largely an Islamist protest (even
though some in the Western media still portray it as a "general"
demonstration).

There,
in front of the Defense Ministry, the Islamists exposed their true face—exposed
their hunger for power, their unpatriotic motivations, and their political
ineptitude. For starters, among those leading the protests was none other than
Muhammad al-Zawahiri, a brother of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, and a
seasoned jihadi in his own right, who was only recently acquitted and released
from prison, where, since 1998, he was incarcerated "on charges of
undergoing military training in Albania and planning military operations in
Egypt."

Before
the Friday protest, Zawahiri appeared "at the head of hundreds of
protesters," including "dozens of jihadis," demonstrating in
front of the Defense Ministry. They waved banners that read, "Victory or
Death" and chanted "Jihad! Jihad!"—all punctuated by cries of
"Allahu Akbar!" Likewise, Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya—the group responsible
for slaughtering some 60 European tourists in the 1997 Luxor Massacre—was at
the protests. Even the so-called "moderate" Muslim Brotherhood
participated.

Two
lessons emerge here: 1) an Islamist is an Islamist is an Islamist: when it
comes down to ideology, they are one; 2) Violence and more calls to jihad are
the fruits of clemency—the thanks Egypt's Supreme Council of Armed Forces
(SCAF) gets for releasing such Islamists imprisoned during ousted President
Hosni Mubarak's tenure.

As
for the actual protests (which, as one might expect from the quality of its
participants, quickly turned savage) this Egyptian news clip shows bearded
Salafis wreaking havoc and screaming jihadi slogans as they try to break into
the Defense Ministry, homemade bombs waiting to be used, and a girl in black
hijab savagely tearing down a security barbed-wire—the hallmarks of a jihadi
takeover.

More
tellingly, jihadis in the nearby Nour Mosque opened fire on the military from
the windows of the minaret; and when the military stormed the mosque, apprehending
the snipers, all the Muslim Brotherhood had to say was: "We also condemn
the aggression [from the military] against the house of God (Nour Mosque) and
the arrest of people from within"—without bothering to denounce the terror
such people were committing from within 'the house of God."

It
is worthwhile contrasting this episode with last year's Maspero massacre, when
Egypt's Coptic Christians demonstrated because their churches were constantly
being attacked. Then, the military burst forth with tanks, intentionally
running Christians over, killing dozens, and trying to frame the Copts for the
violence (all of which was quickly exposed as lies). Likewise, while some
accuse the Copts of housing weapons in their churches to "conquer"
Egypt, here is more evidence that mosques are stockpiled with weapons.

At
any rate, what was billed as a "protest" was quickly exposed as
Islamists doing their thing—waging jihad against the infidel foe. Yet this
time, their foe was the Egyptian army; as opposed to SCAF—the entrenched, and
largely disliked, ruling military council—the Egyptian army is popular with
most Egyptians.

As
one Egyptian political activist put it, "The public doesn't differentiate
between Salafists, Wahhabis or Muslim Brotherhood any more. They are all
Islamists. They have lost support with the public, it is irreversible.
Egyptians have seen their army and soldiers being attacked. It has stirred a
lot of emotions." A BBC report concurs: "The army holds a special,
respected place in Egyptian society, and as far as many Egyptians were
concerned it was attacked, not by a foreign enemy, but by Islamists…. One
soldier died in the attack. Egyptian TV also showed dramatic pictures of
injured soldiers."

The
remarks of an Egyptian news anchorwoman as she showed such violent clips are
further noteworthy. In dismay, she rhetorically asked: "Who is the enemy?
They [protesters] are calling for jihad against whom? Are our soldiers being
attacked by Israeli soldiers—or is it our own people attacking them? Why don't
you go fight the Israeli enemy to liberate Palestine! Who are you liberating
Egypt from? This is unacceptable. Do you people want a nation or do you want
constant jihad—and a jihad against whom, exactly"?

To
place her comments in context, known that, in Egypt, jihadis are often
portrayed as the "good guys"—fighting for Egypt's honor, fighting to
"liberate Palestine," and so on—while Israel is portrayed as the
natural recipient of jihad. After Friday's violent clash, however, Egyptians are
learning that no one is immune from the destructive forces of jihad, including
Egypt itself and its guardian, the military. Two weeks before the presidential
elections, perhaps voters are also learning that an Islamist president will
bring only more chaos and oppression—just like his followers on display last
Friday. Time will tell.

-This commentary was published by Middle East Forum on 10/05/2012
-Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and
an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum

The war of words over an Israeli attack on Iran is splitting the
political leadership from military and intelligence chiefs. And that dangerous
divide in Jerusalem might well lead to real war.

BY NATAN SACHS

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Something
has gone very wrong with Israel's posture on Iran's nuclear program. While
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak lead a
confrontational approach -- including dramatic interviews and speeches to U.S.
audiences that have convinced many that Israel might soon strike Iran's nuclear
facilities -- the former heads of Israel's intelligence agencies have come out
publicly against the government's position. First, Meir Dagan -- who headed the
Mossad until late 2010 and coordinated Israel's Iran policy -- called an attack
on Iran "the most foolish thing I've heard." In April, Yuval Diskin
-- the previous head of the domestic intelligence service, the Shin Bet --
voiced a scathing and personal critique of Netanyahu and Barak. Diskin
questioned not only the leaders' policy, but also their very judgment and
capacity to lead, warning against their "messianic" approach to
Iran's nuclear program.

Given
these differences, should the United States -- and Iran -- fear an Israeli
strike more, or should they relax as Israel busies itself with internal
arguments? Although it may be tempting to think that the Dagan-Diskin campaign
lessens the chance of confrontation, in truth it raises two dire possibilities.
First, if the former spy chiefs are correct about Netanyahu's and Barak's lack
of judgment, this is hardly cause for comfort. If, however, Dagan and Diskin
are mistaken and Israeli strategy is in fact calculated and sober, then
undermining Israel's credibility -- as they themselves have done -- makes an
Israeli strike more likely, not less. The less credible the Israeli threat, the
more likely Iran is to try to call an Israeli bluff, and thus the more likely
Israel is to try to back up its words with deeds.

At
the core of the question is how one interprets Israel's confrontational
approach to Iran. Some view the Netanyahu-Barak strategy as a deliberate
attempt to push the United States and the international community into decisive
action, including tough sanctions and the threat of U.S. military action, lest
Israel strike unilaterally. Israel, in this view, is acting as a "rational
madman," calculating that appearing reckless will compel the United
States, the international community, and Iran to heed its warnings. In an
interview with the Hebrew daily Israel Hayom, Barak in effect said as much: The
critics "travel the world, and their words weaken the considerable
achievement of Israeli policy, where we made the Iranian issue a major, urgent
issue, not only for Israel but for the world." For Barak, Israel's
strategy has been manifestly successful, focusing the attention of a reluctant,
distracted international community on Iran's nuclear program and producing
stifling sanctions on the Iranian banking system.

But
not all view the Israeli strategy this way. Some observers, both foreign and
Israeli, are convinced that Netanyahu and Barak are genuine in their doomsday
rhetoric and resolve to attack Iran's nuclear facilities. If Netanyahu is
willing to evoke the Holocaust and warn of the Iranian "existential
threat," the argument goes, he cannot mean anything less -- nor can he
politically afford anything less -- than overt military action. Netanyahu
indeed has been preoccupied with the Iranian question for decades and may view
stopping Iran's nuclear ambitions as a generational challenge that will define
his term. In this view, the Netanyahu-Barak rhetoric is meant to prepare the
international community for an Israeli strike, which, according to Barak, would
require international legitimacy.

The
confusion over what Netanyahu and Barak actually mean is no accident. The key
to deterrence is the credibility of the deterrent; the key to a "rational
madman" strategy is that others do not see his posture as a bluff. From
outside the prime minister's office, therefore, the two explanations for
Israel's position are, by design, functionally equivalent.

One's
view of the Dagan-Diskin critiques therefore depends on one's assessment of
Netanyahu and Barak. If Diskin is correct about the leaders' lack of judgment,
the former spy chiefs are breaking their silence to stave off a grave danger.
But if Diskin is wrong, the former spy chiefs' words hold serious consequences
for Israeli strategy -- by undermining the credibility of the threat of
military action. On the face of it, accusations of messianic tendencies fit
perfectly with a madman posture, further scaring the world into action. Dagan
in particular was exposed to -- and indeed produced -- the most classified
intelligence on Iran's program; he helped manage Israel's covert response to
the program for years and participated in some of the most sensitive meetings
with the political leadership. If the former intelligence chiefs, who should
know best, are so concerned as to speak publicly against their own leadership
-- something that appears odd to most Israelis, as it does to many abroad --
then surely foreign observers should believe the sincerity of the Israeli
warnings.

On
the other hand, although the Netanyahu government firmly commands the military
(full-scale military disobedience is not even contemplated in Israeli society),
it does not operate in a vacuum. The heads of the military, the Mossad, and the
Shin Bet are household names whose assessments carry weight in Israeli public
opinion. When such high-profile officials publicly question the leadership's judgment,
Israelis listen. Although some (such as Barak in his Israel Hayom interview)
have questioned Dagan's and Diskin's motives in speaking publicly, and although
Netanyahu's political allies have struck back forcefully and impugned their
civic responsibility, few doubt the sincerity of their position. Dagan and
Diskin, moreover, are not alone. Former military commanders, and even the
current chief of staff, appear to hold different views from the political
leadership on the severity of the Iranian threat. The new vice prime minister
and former defense minister, Shaul Mofaz, voiced his support of Diskin before
joining the Netanyahu government. Even among the most hawkish senior ministers,
there is opposition to Barak's approach, especially on the urgency of a strike;
Vice Prime Minister Moshe "Bogie" Ya'alon, a former chief of staff
like Mofaz, has implicitly criticized Barak's notion of a "zone of
immunity" -- a point at which Iran's facilities would be immune to an
attack if Israel did not act quickly -- noting, "Anything fortified by a
human can be penetrated by a human."

With
all this opposition, it may be no surprise that the public is wary of a
unilateral strike; according to a recent survey by Shibley Telhami of the
Brookings Institution, only 19 percent of Israelis endorsed an Israeli strike
without U.S. support, and 32 percent opposed an attack regardless. Israeli
public opinion may simply not permit the political leadership -- always careful
of the electoral ramifications of its actions -- to undertake a step as bold as
a unilateral military strike. Most importantly: Iranian and international
observers know this.

With
the U.S. presidential election in November and ongoing talks between Iran and
the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany (P5+1), the
possibility of an Israeli strike will likely remain low for the time being. An
Israeli airstrike would require carefully orchestrated precision bombing that
would be sensitive to weather conditions, meaning that the next window for an
Israeli airstrike would likely be in the spring of 2013. Still, if Israel has
any say in the matter, the Iranian nuclear issue will not go away. If the
results of the P5+1 negotiations do not ensure the verifiable end to high-level
uranium enrichment and the removal of existing highly enriched uranium from
Iran, Israel may return to the warpath. And the new national unity government
in Israel, though it may moderate the leadership's position somewhat, will also
grant the government valuable domestic political cover for a strike, should one
be ordered.

The
lesson from the intelligence chiefs' "revolt" in Israel, therefore,
should not be complacency, but concern. Toward the end of 2012, the world will
face either an Israel that is determined to use overt force to stop a
nuclear-armed Iran, as Dagan and Diskin suggest, or a "rational
madman" who believes he needs to repair the credibility that some of
Israel's most prominent military and intelligence chiefs have undermined.
Either way, it is vital that the international community maintain its focus on
the Iranian nuclear program so that the Israeli bluff -- if there is one -- is
not tested.

-This commentary was published in Foreign Policy on 10/05/2012
-Natan Sachs is a fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the
Brookings Institution

Thursday, May 10, 2012

Egypt's presidential front-runner is a fascinating political
chameleon. But does he have enough real support to win the upcoming election?

BY SHADI HAMID

Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh

In
January, Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh was a long shot to become Egypt's next
president. When I walked into the Islamist candidate's basement in a far-flung
Cairo suburb -- which was doubling as a "backup" headquarters -- it
made me think back to the early, insurgent days of Barack Obama's campaign,
when Hillary Clinton was still the presumptive Democratic nominee. The
basement, with its large spare rooms, was packed with young volunteers. It had
a chaotic, bustling feel. Aboul Fotouh's supporters may have hailed from
radically different backgrounds, but they believed, above all, in the
candidate. They wanted to transcend the old battle lines of
"Islamist" or "liberal" and reimagine Egyptian politics in
the process.

What
those grand ambitions mean in practice is, at times, unclear. As Aboul Fotouh
has risen to front-runner status in the first ever competitive presidential
election in Egypt's history, he has become the Rorschach test of Egyptian
politics. Liberals think he's more liberal than he actually is. Conservatives
hope he's more conservative.

It's
an understatement to say that the Aboul Fotouh campaign is a big-tent movement.
A former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and, for decades, one of Egypt's most
prominent Islamist figures, he has become the standard-bearer of many of the
young liberals who led Egypt's revolution -- including Google executive Wael
Ghonim. He is also, however, the preferred candidate of the country's hard-line
Salafi groups, including the al-Nour Party and its parent organization al-Dawa
al-Salafiya, one of Egypt's largest religious movements. This is all the more
impressive considering that, unlike the United States or most European
countries, the primary political cleavage in Egypt has little to do with
economics and much more to do with religion.

Aboul
Fotouh's success stems in part from his ability to neutralize this religious
divide. One of his messages -- and one that has appeal for liberals and
hard-line Islamists alike -- is this: We are all, in effect, Islamists, so why
fight over it? As he explained to a Salafi television channel in February, "Today
those who call themselves liberals or leftists, this is just a political name,
but most of them understand and respect Islamic values. They support the sharia
and are no longer against it." In a creative attempt at redefinition,
Aboul Fotouh noted that all Muslims are, by definition, Salafi, in the sense
that they are loyal to the Salaf, the earliest, most pious generations of
Muslims.

Aboul
Fotouh is able to make this argument and make it sound convincing, in part
because of who he is. He is the rare figure who has been, at various points in
his career, a Salafi, a Muslim Brother, and, today, a Turkish-style
"liberal Islamist." In the 1970s, he rose to prominence as a leader
and founder of al-Gamaa al-Islamiya, the religious movement that wrested
control over universities from the once dominant leftists. In his biography,
Aboul Fotouh recalls the early Salafi influence on his ideas: He and his fellow
students aggressively promoted sex segregation on campus. At one point, they
tried to "prove" to the Muslim Brotherhood's leader at the time, Umar
al-Tilmisani, that music was haram, or forbidden by Islam.

Over
the course of the decade, Aboul Fotouh developed close relationships with those
who would later become the leading lights of Salafi thought. After the 2011
revolution, Aboul Fotouh, then in the process of splitting with the
Brotherhood, was one of the few politicians to take Salafists seriously. It
helped that he knew them. While the Muslim Brotherhood tended to treat
Salafists as immature, younger brothers in the Islamic family, Aboul Fotouh
exaggerated their power -- he once claimed that Salafists outnumbered Muslim
Brothers 20-to-1 -- and pledged to seek their vote. Respect, it turns out, can
go much further than ideological proximity.

But
the ideological tensions within the Islamist camp remain, even if Aboul
Fotouh's message tends to paper them over. According to him, all Islamists
agree on the usul (the "fundamentals") but differ on the furu (the
"specifics") of religious practice. In his February interview on
Salafi television, he estimated, implausibly, that Islamists agree on 99
percent of the issues.

Thus
far, his liberal supporters have dismissed such comments or explained them
away. Part of it is the lack of alternatives. The other front-runner, former
Foreign Minister Amr Moussa, is seen as felool, a derogatory term used to
describe "remnants" of the old regime. Part of it, however, is that
they really seem to believe Aboul Fotouh is who they want him to be. Although
Aboul Fotouh is adamantly an Islamist, he has also broken with his former
organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, and other Islamists on key issues. Last
year, for instance, Aboul Fotouh asserted that a Muslim has the right to
convert to Christianity -- a particularly controversial position for a
presidential candidate to take, given that most Sunni scholars hold that the
punishment for apostasy is death.

Aboul
Fotouh has often insisted on the dangers of mixing preaching and party
politics, a position that appeals to liberals as well as some Islamists. When I
met with him in 2010 at the height of the Mubarak regime's repression -- and
just months before the most rigged parliamentary elections in Egyptian history
-- he spoke at length about the need to separate the two. The Muslim Brotherhood,
he said, can deal with political issues but should leave competition over power
to political parties.

"Putting
religion and political authority within one hand is very dangerous. That's what
happened in Iran," he told me, peppering his measured Arabic with choice
English words for added emphasis. "Historically, famous preachers were not
part of the power structure. It's these [autocratic] regimes who put the two
together -- putting al-Azhar [the preeminent center of Islamic learning] under
the control of the state."

Aboul
Fotouh consistently valued the Muslim Brotherhood's social and evangelical work
over its accumulation of political power. In July 2008, I asked him what would
happen if Hosni Mubarak's regime shut the Brotherhood out of parliament. Faced
with the prospect of even more repression, he seemed surprisingly calm.
"The Muslim Brotherhood is a social movement in the first place. Its
presence in parliament is useful and good, but lack of parliamentary
representation does not have an existential effect on the Brotherhood. From
1970 to 1984, we weren't in parliament, and they were 14 of the most active
years for the Brotherhood's work of preaching and education."

In
this respect, Aboul Fotouh is an old-school Islamist, seeing himself as a
faithful heir to Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna's legacy. According to its
bylaws, the group's original aim was "to raise a generation of Muslims who
would understand Islam correctly and act according to its teachings."
Until 1934, the bylaws forbade direct political action. Decades later, General
Guide Tilmisani, fearing party politics would corrupt the Brotherhood's soul,
prevented the organization from contesting parliamentary elections for many
years.

There
is a tension, however, between Aboul Fotouh's sometimes liberal pronouncements
and his essentially majoritarian understanding of democracy. When I sat down
with Aboul Fotouh for the first time in the summer of 2006, I wanted to
understand his philosophy of government, to the extent that he had one. He
repeatedly emphasized that the people, represented by a freely elected
parliament, are the source of authority. On the thorny question, however, of
what Islamists would do if parliament passed an "un-Islamic" law, he
dismissed the concern: "The parliament won't grant rights to gays because
that goes against the prevailing culture of society, and if [members of parliament]
did that, they'd lose the next election," he explained. "Whether you
are a communist, socialist, or whatever, you can't go against the prevailing
culture. There is already a built-in respect for sharia."

This
notion has a long pedigree in Islamic thought: Prophet Mohammed is believed to
have said, "My ummah [community] will not agree on an error."
Likewise, Aboul Fotouh was confident that once Egyptian society was free, the
best ideas would rise to the top. There was little need, then, to regulate
society from the top down. On their own, without government getting too much in
the way, Egyptians would do the right thing. And this would inevitably help
Islam. "What happens in a free society?" Aboul Fotouh went on.
"I hold conferences and spread my ideas through newspapers and television
to try to bring public opinion closer to me.… We have confidence in what we
believe."

If
people are looking for a consistent strain in Aboul Fotouh's thought, it is
this: that Islam has already won out and will continue to win out. Islam is a
source of unity and national strength rather than one of division. Depending on
where exactly an Egyptian voter stands, this is either reassuring and somewhat
banal, or mildly frightening, particularly for the country's Christian
minority.

Nevertheless,
it is an idea with analogues elsewhere in the region, most notably in Turkey
and Tunisia, where "moderate" Islamists came to power by tapping into
a religious mainstream that had lost faith in the secular project of previous
decades. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for example, used
democratization to strengthen the place of Islam in public life. He embraced
European Union accession talks while knowing full well that the required
liberal reforms would weaken the military's influence and empower Islamic
currents in a country where the right to openly express religious values had
been severely curtailed. In Tunisia, Rached Ghannouchi and his al-Nahda party
have backed off from demands that Islamic law be enshrined in the Tunisian
Constitution, perhaps knowing that Islamization of Tunisian society is already
well under way, regardless of what the Tunisian Constitution says.

Indeed,
the same attacks that follow Aboul Fotouh's counterparts in Turkey and Tunisia
will be used against him: that he is a proponent of "stealth
Islamization" and that he remains faithful to the project of applying
sharia. The critics might be right. If Aboul Fotouh becomes president, there
will be a battle -- between his liberal, revolutionary supporters and his
Islamist backers -- over the direction his presidency takes. Now that the major
Salafi organizations have endorsed him, they are likely to have significant
influence in an Aboul Fotouh administration, pushing his presidency to the
right on social and moral issues.

But
though Salafists are a critical bloc of support for the Aboul Fotouh campaign,
they have little presence in the candidate's inner circle and campaign
organization, which is composed mostly of ex-Muslim Brotherhood members, liberals,
and revolutionary youth. One of Aboul Fotouh's closest aides is Rabab El-Mahdi,
a Marxist political science professor, who says her "biggest project"
is ending the Islamist-secularist divide and focusing on the bread-and-butter
issues that actually matter in people's lives. Another is the 30-year-old Ali
El-Bahnasawy, a self-described liberal who is Aboul Fotouh's media advisor. He
told me that the Salafists' endorsement was "amazing" and credited
them for realizing that "Egypt needs to end the polarization in the
country now." For him, this is the essence of Aboul Fotouh's appeal.
"We need someone," Bahnasawy said, "who can talk to the
Islamists and speak their language and talk to the liberals and gain their
trust as well."

The
popularity of Aboul Fotouh's campaign is partly a reaction to growing
polarization in Egypt, where fears abound of an "Algeria scenario" of
annulled elections, dissolved parliaments, and military coups. But just as the
high hopes of the Obama campaign were dashed by the political compromises
inherent in governing, an Aboul Fotouh administration may find it difficult to
transcend the basic realities of Egyptian political life. If he wins, his
supporters will soon find that the divisions between Egypt's feuding political
currents do not dissipate quickly, if at all.

It
is perhaps telling that Aboul Fotouh's rise comes at a time when religious
belief has become an easy substitute for real discussion on economic recovery,
security-sector reform, or how to fight income inequality. For the vast
majority of Egyptians, the debate over sharia has been utterly beside the
point. It is an elite debate and, in some ways, a manufactured one. As Aboul
Fotouh will be the first to say, all major political forces support Article 2
of the Egyptian Constitution, which states that the "principles of the
Islamic sharia are the primary source of legislation." Even the most
"secular" party -- the Free Egyptians -- took to campaigning in rural
areas with banners reading "The Quran Is Our Constitution." Meanwhile,
it was the Salafists, and not the more moderate Muslim Brotherhood, who entered
into serious negotiations over forming a parliamentary coalition with liberal
parties. As a senior official in the Salafi al-Nour Party once put it to me,
"Here in Egypt, even the liberals are conservatives."

Sharia
has become the "hope and change" of Egyptian politics -- all say they
like it, but no one quite knows what it means. As the most powerful man in
Egypt and with a bully pulpit to match, Egypt's first revolutionary president
will have a fleeting opportunity to redefine the meaning of Islam in public
life.

In
the introduction to his electoral program, Aboul Fotouh, the candidate,
embraces the application of sharia. But there's a caveat: "The
understanding of implementation of Islamic law is not, as some people think,
about applying the hudud punishments [such as cutting of the hands of
thieves]," the program reads. "In its complete understanding, Islamic
law has to do with realizing the essential and urgent needs of humankind."
The program then goes on to list combating poverty and fighting corruption as
two fundamental components of applying Islamic law.

For
Aboul Fotouh, sharia is both everything and nothing all at once. For now at
least, that seems to be exactly the way he wants it.

-This commentary was published in Foreign Policy on 09/05/2012
-Shadi Hamid is director of research at the Brookings Doha Center and a fellow
at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Residents
in this Lebanese seaside city are baffled by a series of bombings that appear
to be linked only by the fact their targets are places that sold alcohol.

Since
November, four establishments, including two restaurants, have been targeted.
No one has been seriously injured in the attacks and no group has claimed
responsibility.

But
the motive has generated as much speculation as the perpetrators.

In
the largely conservative, majority Shiite south of Lebanon, Tyre is known as a
comparatively liberal and relaxed town, home to Shiites, Sunnis, and
Christians.

Are
the attacks aimed at creating strife in this multi-denominational city? Is it a
warning from conservatives who oppose the ready availability of alcohol and
young people mixing at parties and the beaches? Could it be a spillover of
simmering tensions and political divisions in Lebanon, where the gap between
the ruling coalition and the opposition is widening?

Zahi
Zaidan, the manager of the Nocean restaurant, the most recent target in April,
said people were on edge.

"They
succeeded to put fear in people. They are not going out for parties at the
moment. I personally am also in fear about what happened," the 35-year-old
said while seated in a booth at a friend's nearby cafe,

"They
are targeting tourism, but they are using the excuse of alcohol."

At
this time of year, Tyre, in the south of Lebanon, is normally gearing up for
its busy summer season, when locals and tourists flock to the Mediterranean
coastal town.

But
two weeks after the attack, debris still litters the damaged staircase leading
to Nocean. A car that was parked outside the entrance to the restaurant when
the bomb went off remains nearby. It is wrecked, and its windscreen shattered.
The police investigation continues.

The
bomb was detonated just before midnight at closing time on Sunday, April 22,
targeting the third-floor restaurant and slightly injuring several staff. A
McDonald's on the ground floor was not affected by the blast.

Mohammed
Safieddine, who owns Nocean and another restaurant along the nearby corniche,
said the explosion caused hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of damage,
none of which is covered by insurance.

Mr
Safieddine stopped serving alcohol at his corniche venue two months ago after
what he described as unsolicited "advice", without specifying from
whom.

"I
decided it's safer to do that," he said. "But whoever is behind these
bombings, they have killed the city. There are no more people coming out and
the city is empty. It has had a major effect."

The
Shiite Amal movement, which has a strong following in Tyre, has criticised the
bombings, describing them as aimed at sowing instability. A source, who spoke
on the condition of anonymity, said the perpetrators were "trying to shake
the security situation in the country".

Soldiers
with the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) are also stationed
near the city.

Last
December, a roadside bomb targeted a patrol close to Tyre, injuring five French
soldiers and one Lebanese civilian.

As
with the restaurant bombings, no group claimed responsibility for the attack,
which was one of three last year against the international peacekeepers in
Lebanon.

Timor
Goksel, a former spokesman and senior adviser for Unifil, dismissed the idea
that the recent attacks were aimed at foreigners or peacekeepers. He believes
the perpetrators could be from local extremist groups trying to prove a point.

"From
the nature of the attacks it seems like small groups that are not that
militarily experienced," he said. "They are spoilers, but they can
ruin things."

The
Tyre bombings are not the first such incidents to target alcohol vendors in the
south of Lebanon, but it has been years since the last attacks.

Last
year, in the more conservative town of Nabatiyeh, several shops were instructed
to stop selling alcohol by a community campaign.

Seated
just inside the doorway of a small liquor store his family has run in Tyre for
decades, a man - who did not want to be named fearing he might be targeted -
said whoever was behind the recent blasts in his city were trying to send a
message.

"Maybe
it is about alcohol or maybe it is just about chaos. They do this to confuse
everyone here," said the man in his sixties.

"People
are, of course, scared, because there are so many questions. Sunni and Shia
people are also very upset about this."

Sanctions have succeeded in bringing Tehran back to the
negotiating table, but they are a tactic, not a strategy. Any long-term policy
has to aim for a democratic Iran.

By Patrick Clawson

At a bazaar in Tehran. (Raheb Homavandi / Courtesy Reuters)

To
judge the effectiveness of Western sanctions against Iran, it is important to
first establish their purpose. U.S. officials and their European counterparts
have set out a number of different goals for the sanctions regime, including
deterring the proliferation of nuclear technology across the Middle East, as
other countries imitate Iran, and persuading Iran to comply with the UN
Security Council’s orders to suspend all nuclear enrichment. The sanctions have
met some of those aims and failed to meet others. But for the Obama
administration, they have succeeded in one crucial way -- bringing Iran back to
the negotiating table. The question, then, is not whether sanctions have worked
but whether the strategy they serve is correct.

To
begin with, Tehran’s decision to re-enter discussions about the future of its
nuclear program represents a dramatic about-face. During the January 2011 round
of negotiations between Iran and the so-called P5 plus 1 (the five permanent
members of the UN Security Council and Germany), for example, Tehran rejected
any talk of its nuclear program. For the next 15 months, it refused to meet
until the P5 plus 1 accepted the precondition of Iran’s right to enrich
uranium. In new talks in Istanbul this past March, however, Iran agreed to
discuss its nuclear efforts and dropped its precondition.

The
Islamic Republic did not do this out of goodwill but because of tougher
sanctions. By demonstrating a willingness to negotiate and working closely with
Europe, the Obama administration has rallied many countries behind its efforts.
This broad coalition has established increasingly severe sanctions -- results
that the United States could not have achieved alone. In March, for example,
the European Union banned the largest Iranian banks from the Society for
Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, the main institution used for
transferring money between banks across the globe, thereby crippling the
ability of Iranian financial institutions to conduct business. And earlier this
year, the European Union began imposing an oil embargo on Iran that has already
reduced the country’s oil exports. In the last six months, these measures,
along with Iran's erratic economic policies, have robbed the currency of half
its value and, according to Iranian estimates, caused inflation to soar above
20 percent (and likely much higher). Iranian Central Bank Governor Mahmoud
Bahmani described the sanctions “as worse than physical war,” proclaiming Iran
“under siege.” And Iranian business leaders worry that more sanctions are on
the way, since the United States and Europe have made clear that the longer the
impasse over its nuclear ambitions continues, the more economic and political
trouble Iran will face.

The
sanctions have also helped Washington slow Tehran’s nuclear progress. Alongside
sabotage, defections, cyber attacks, and assassinations, sanctions -- such as
the UN ban on the acquisition of so-called dual-use items, seemingly benign
technologies that could be applied to the nuclear program -- have hampered
Iran’s technological advancement. For example, the Islamic Republic, despite
its best efforts, continues to use a poor, outdated design for its centrifuges,
which frequently break down because the country cannot obtain better technology
or high-quality materials.

Yet
the sanctions do have limits. The EU oil embargo and U.S. and EU financial
restrictions have largely failed to decrease Iran’s oil revenue. Those
sanctions would have had much more impact a decade ago, when Iran averaged $19
billion a year in oil income. Oil prices are now so high that Iran can compensate
for Western pressure. Prior to the recent sanctions, the International Monetary
Fund estimated that revenue from Iran’s oil and gas exports in 2012–13 would
reach $104 billion, $23 billion more than in 2010–11. In March, The Wall Street
Journal cited estimates that sanctions could cut Iranian oil income in half --
painful but still equal to the $54 billion Iran earned from oil sales in
2005–6, the year when it decided to provoke the West by resuming nuclear
enrichment after a three-year pause. Even if sanctions could somehow decimate
Iran’s economy, there is still no guarantee that the regime would end its
pursuit of nuclear technology.

Whether
or not diplomacy results in an agreement, the sanctions have already fulfilled
the core objective of the Obama administration -- namely, kick-starting
negotiations. But that is not the right goal. Given Iran’s poor track record of
honoring agreements, negotiations remain a gamble because they may never lead
to an agreement, let alone one that can be sustained. Rather than focus on
talks that may not produce a deal, then, the United States should place far
more emphasis on supporting democracy and human rights in Iran. A democratic
Iran would likely drop state support for terrorism and end its interference in
the internal affairs of Arab countries such as Iraq and Lebanon, improving
stability in the Middle East. And although Iran’s strongly nationalist
democrats are proud of the country’s nuclear progress, their priority is to
rejoin the community of nations, so they will likely agree to peaceful
nuclearization in exchange for an end to their country’s isolation.

The
United States could assist democratic forces in Iran by providing money and
moral support. It could fund people-to-people exchanges and student
scholarships; support civil society groups providing assistance to Iranian
activists; work closely with technology companies such as Google on how to
transmit information to the Iranian people; and overhaul Voice of America’s
Persian News Network, where journalistic standards have suffered under uneven
management. It could also raise human rights abuses in every official meeting
with Iranian officials, such as the ongoing nuclear negotiations, and bring
Iranian rights violations to the United Nations and the International Court of
Justice. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, understands the danger
of a popular revolution in his country and has done everything in his power to
prevent it. If the United States is going to take a risk, it should aim not for
a partial, insecure nuclear arrangement but the best return possible -- a
democratic Iran.

-This commentary was published in Foreign Affairs on 08/05/2012
-Patrick Clawson is Director of Research at the Washington Institute for Near
East Policy and the editor of numerous books and studies on Iran

About Me

I graduated from the French University in Beirut (St Joseph) specialising in Political and Economic Sciences. I started my working life in 1973 as a reporter and journalist for the pan-Arab magazine “Al-Hawadess” in Lebanon later becoming its Washington, D.C. correspondent. I subsequently moved to London in 1979 joining “Al-Majallah” magazine as its Deputy Managing Editor. In 1984 joined “Assayad” magazine in London initially as its Managing Editor and later as Editor-in-Chief. Following this, in 1990 I joined “Al-Wasat” magazine (part of the Dar-Al-Hayat Group) in London as a Managing Editor. In 2011 I became the Editor-In-Chief of Miraat el-Khaleej (Gulf Mirror). In July 2012 I became the Chairman of The Board of Asswak Al-Arab Publishing Ltd in UK and the Editor In Chief of its first Publication "Asswak Al-Arab" Magazine (Arab Markets Magazine) (www.asswak-alarab.com).

I have already authored five books. The first “The Tears of the Horizon” is a love story. The second “The Winter of Discontent in The Gulf” (1991) focuses on the first Gulf war sparked by Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. His third book is entitled “Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: From Balfour Promise to Bush Declaration: The Complications and the Road to a Lasting Peace” (March 2008). The fourth book is titled “How Iran Plans to Fight America and Dominate the Middle East” (October 2008) And the fifth and the most recent is titled "JIHAD'S NEW HEARTLANDS: Why The West Has Failed To Contain Islamic Fundamentalism" (May 2011).

Furthermore, I wrote the memoirs of national security advisor to US President Ronald Reagan, Mr Robert McFarlane, serializing them in “Al-Wasat” magazine over 14 episodes in 1992.

Over the years, I have interviewed and met several world leaders such as American President Bill Clinton, British Prime Minister Margaret Thacher, Late King Hassan II of Morocco, Late King Hussein of Jordan,Tunisian President Zein El-Abedine Bin Ali, Lybian Leader Moammar Al-Quadhafi,President Amine Gemayel of Lebanon,late Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, Late Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat, Haitian President Jean Claude Duvalier, Late United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan,Algerian President Shazli Bin Jdid, Jamaican Prime Minister Edward Siyagha and more...